Prevnar causes pneumonia and antibiotic resistant ear infections

This article is not much of shock to most people who've done any research on the Prevnar vaccine- reports of it causing severe antibiotic resistant ear infections and pneumonia are not new.  What is new  is that this article was reported in the main stream media, and THAT was a surprize to me!!!

Shot may be inadvertently boosting superbugs

Strains tied to kids’ ear infections flourish as vaccine fights common germs

 CHICAGO  — A vaccine that has dramatically curbed pneumonia and other serious illnesses in children is having an unfortunate effect: promoting new superbugs that cause ear infections.
It is a strain of strep bacteria not included in pneumococcal vaccine, Wyeth's Prevnar, which came on the market in 2000. It is recommended for children under age 2.On Monday, doctors reported discovering the first such germ that is resistant to all drugs approved to treat childhood ear infections. Nine toddlers in Rochester, N.Y., have had the germ and researchers say it may be turning up elsewhere, too.
Doctors say parents should continue to have their toddlers get the shots because the vaccine prevents serious illness and even saves lives. But the new resistant strep is a worry.
"The best way to prevent these resistant infections from spreading is to be careful about how we use antibiotics," said Dr. Cynthia Whitney, chief of respiratory diseases at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Avoiding antibiotics when they are not needed is the best way to ensure they will work when they are, she said.....
The children had been unsuccessfully treated with two or more antibiotics, including high-dose amoxicillin and multiple shots of another drug. Many needed surgery to place ear tubes to drain the infection, and some recovered only after treatment with a newer, powerful antibiotic whose safety in children has not been established.......Big trouble One strain in particular, called 19A, is big trouble. A new subtype of it caused ear infections in the nine Rochester children, ages 6 months to 18 months, that were resistant to all pediatric medications, said Dr. Michael Pichichero, a microbiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Pichichero refused further comment because he has submitted a report to a medical journal. His work was paid for by antibiotic maker Abbott Laboratories and the Thrasher Foundation, which funds projects related to child health.
All 19A strep subtypes tend to be resistant to some drugs and have been growing in prevalence:

• Scientists from a drug company and two labs analyzed more than 21,000 bacterial samples from around the nation and found 19A increasing. Among children 2 and under, the portion of samples that were this strain rose to 15 percent in 2005-2006, from 4 percent in the previous three years.

• A British lab tracking respiratory infections in U.S. kids found that the 19A strain accounted for 40 percent of drug-resistant cases.

• University of Iowa researchers found 19A accounted for 35 percent of penicillin-resistant infections in 2004-05, compared with less than 2 percent the year before the new vaccine came out.

HERE to read the entire article on MSNBC

This article  gives lots more info about Prevnar, with tons of links to follow your own research:

Prevnar vaccine dangers

Search the Internet for Prevnar vaccine SAFETY and, surprise, surprise, you will get plenty of results about its dangers instead.I did such a search just out of curiosity. I had already learned that three babies in the Netherlands had died recently, at end-Oct / early-Nov 2009, after they were given this pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV),
Also, I am familiar with data from Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) - which include "coincidental" events as well as those truly caused by vaccines - that showed 28,317 adverse reactions since the Prevnar vaccine was approved in 2000. These included:

• 558 deaths

• 555 life threatening conditions

• 238 permanent disabilities

• 2,584 hospitalisations

• 101 prolonged hospitalisations

• 8,166 emergency room cases and

• 16,155 "not serious".

In addition, I had written in an earlier article about pneumonia vaccine side effects that the introduction of Prevnar and other pneumonia vaccines has led to:

• an increase in the incidence of pneumonia caused by bacteria NOT covered by these vaccines

• an increase in middle-ear infections due to bacteria not linked to pneumonia

• the emergence of "superbugs" that are resistant to vaccines.

So I was already quite familiar with the dangers and side effects of PCV vaccines like Prevnar. I was curious what was being claimed about the safety of Prevnar vaccine. So I did a search on Google. I found...

• Prevnar IS Safe - Have a look at the studies...
 It tells about a new PCV-13 Prevnar vaccine trial in India that was stopped after a baby died. Looks like the title was just being sarcastic

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• VaccineRiskAwareness.com
... This is pretty straightforward, no sarcasm or anything of the sort. But I learn here that, oh, by the way, Prevnar has not been evaluated for any carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or impairment of fertility (ie they don’t know if it causes cancer, mutates into other illnesses or impairs people’s ability to have children).

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• By law, vaccines are not required to be tested for any links to cancer. This itself is not necessarily a danger, just a (very) possible danger of the unknown.

 HERE to read the entire article.